Carney Announces Housing Plan, Poilievre Pledges to Create National Energy Corridor

(L-R) Liberal Leader Mark Carney; Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick; Adrian Wyld

Liberal Leader Mark Carney has pledged to double housing construction through over $35 billion in new housing investments, while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says his government would build a National Energy Corridor to fast-track approvals for infrastructure like pipelines, railways, and transmission lines.

Carney announced on March 31 that his government would aim to double the pace of residential housing construction to almost 500,000 new homes a year through a new federal housing entity dubbed Build Canada Homes (BCH).

BCH would act as a developer and oversee affordable housing construction, ramp up construction, and provide financing to homebuilders.

“By getting government back into the business of building affordable homes and by making the market work better, we will drive a huge increase in housing supply so we can bring cost down for Canadians,” Carney told reporters in Vaughan, Ont.

BCH would provide over $25 billion in financing to “innovative” Canadian prefabricated home builders, including those who use Canadian technologies and resources like timber and softwood lumber. Carney said the program would also provide $10 billion in low-cost financing and capital to build “deeply affordable homes for those most in need,” such as students and seniors.

Carney said his housing plan also includes efforts to cut red tape, such as by halving municipal development charges for five years for multi-unit residential housing. He said he would also reintroduce a tax incentive from the 1970s called the Multiple Unit Rental Building cost allowance, which allows investors to claim depreciation and other costs of an apartment building against unrelated income.

The Liberals’ existing $4 billion Housing Accelerator Fund would also be expanded, with Carney saying the government would “double down on what’s already working.”

Poilievre has said his government would eliminate the Housing Accelerator Fund and $6 billion Canada Housing Infrastructure Fund, arguing the policies have not resulted in more homes being built. The Tories have said those savings would be used to eliminate the federal sales tax on new homes up to $1.3 million, while the Grits have pledged to get rid of the GST for first-time homebuyers on all new and “substantially renovated” homes under $1 million.

Poilievre’s Natural Energy Corridor

Poilievre announced the same day that his government would create a pre-approved corridor to allow businesses to build “pipelines, transmission lines, rail lines, and countless other kinds of infrastructure that we need to break our dependence on the Americans.”

“With Donald Trump threatening our country with tariffs, we need big projects that link our regions, east to west,” he said during a campaign stop in Saint John, N.B., on March 31. “We need to be able to get our resources across Canada, bypassing America, so we can trade more with each other and sell our resources to the world.”

Poilievre said the corridor would use the model of the “Canada Shovel Ready Zones” that the Tories announced last week, in which assessments on impacts to the environment and local population are conducted beforehand to save time. First Nations would also be involved from the beginning, and economic benefits would flow to them, the Tories said.

Poilievre said pre-approving the projects would allow companies to invest with greater certainty, while criticizing the Liberal government for not approving 16 major energy projects and 18 Liquid Natural Gas plants while in power.

“I understand why businesses, after the Lost Liberal decade, would not want to take the risk of starting an application process that could cost them billions of dollars if they thought that maybe a future government would reverse course,” Poilievre said.

Following a meeting with Canada’s premiers on March 21, Carney pledged to develop a national trade and economic corridor through a “First Mile Fund” to build transportation networks connecting energy extraction sites to rail lines and roads. Carney also promised a “One Window” approval process to streamline approvals for large-scale infrastructure processes, which would reduce uncertainty for investors and create a more predictable review process.